Of Larvae and Love
by Union-Jack2.0
Summary: AU fanfic. After Andromeda's escape from the Magog worldship, Trance's attempt to safely remove the larvae from Tyr fails. The Magog swiftly adapt to the lukaprine, but Beka and Rommie find a way in which Harper might survive - but will he take it?
1. Default Chapter

OF LARVAE AND LOVE

Disclaimer: Tribune owns the characters and the original storylines, themes, location, species and other names etc. All I own is a vague and possibly weird desire to enjoy myself playing with all of the aforementioned. I'm out to have fun here, not make cash of any sort. No, no, not even donations. In the words of Phoebe Buffay, '_I don't need your charity_' and I bloody mean it. Any characters, species, planets and/or spacecraft that I design from scratch to use in this story are things that I do own...sort of. Bit hazy on the details, but then it is very late at night at the time of typing this so I'm a bit hazy about a lot of things. The five mile run and hour-long swim at the local beach combined with my daily workout have left me bloody knackered.

If Tribune really wants to use any of 'em (_excuse me whilst I go to an NHS hospital so they can repair my ribs from my laughing too hard :D_) just contact me and we'll hash out the details. is where I can be contacted for the foreseeable future (hey, I just don't have precognitive abilities like Trance!). If this changes for whatever reason, I'll put the info up here along with the name, address and police mugshots of whoever is responsible.

Author: Union-Jack2.0

Rating: '**R**'.

The reasons for this rating are nothing to do with sex. I want that to be clear from the start. The reason I've applied this rating is because if this goes as I'm planning it to there will be some language (half of which will probably be mild and from me), dark, possibly disturbing scenes of angst (if I can pull 'em off right, fingers crossed) and very likely some extensive violence—none-too-sure about that last one myself, but considering that I've written short stories that feedback has indicated that no-one between the ages of twenty-five and forty should be allowed to read without parental supervision, I feel it's best to be on the safe side.

Hey, I'm not a violent bloke in reality. In fact, the only combat technique I've got any skill with—admittedly, I have mastered it almost completely—is ducking out of the way of whatever fist/foot/knife/fire extinguisher/brick/crowbar/pickaxe/mobile telephone (yes, there are some real psychos out there) that happens to be headed in my direction.

Spoilers: An Affirming Flame, Under The Night, To Loose The Fateful Lightening (only very, very vaguely), All Great Neptune's Ocean (again, vaguely), Its Hour Come Round At Last, The Widening Gyre, Exit Strategies (well, sort of), Ouroboros, maybe some others in Season Two—hey, I haven't got a set hit-list or anything. Be warned, Ouroboros is going to be weird. And that's saying something. Admittedly, I bloody loved that one.

Season: Two, starting right after the escape from the worldship. No idea how long it'll be.

Summary: It's all to do with those Magog larvae. Honestly, the smallest of things can really be the biggest of pests, to ruthlessly paraphrase the Lord of the Rings films. This is an alternative universe in which things went very different with those wee beasties, and various events in Season Two change as a result. In this reality, Magog eggs are a damn sight tougher...

Anyway, I'm hoping to get some mileage out of all the characters to greater or lesser extents, but mainly we're talking about Harper, Tyr and Rommie. Things go very different from canon in some very weird ways...it's complicated. Short version, Trance does NOT successfully remove ALL of Tyr's Magog eggs, and Beka and Rommie find there's another way in which Harper could survive if the worst comes to the worst—question is, will he take it? And for what reasons?

If anyone has already had this idea and is or has written it up and posted it on the web, I extend my very deepest apologies. I seem to be cursed like that; half the fiction I come up with has had something similar already done that I just didn't know about until the most embarrassing moment possible. I won't waste your time ranting over how pissed I was when I found out just what the stuff about the Bermuda Triangle involved—my thing wasn't set anywhere near there, but turned out to have a few similarities to the fics in question re. events involved. Most annoying.

Chances are there'll some romance deployed later on, hence the title, but I'm a tad hazy on the details right now...just stick with me and together we'll see what comes naturally. I can assure you though, there are igneous rocks that will still be more erotic than this, however it turns out. If you want porn, you're in the wrong place and you'll be dissatisfied. Personally, that stuff isn't to my taste, so you won't find a trace of it here. If you want something other than porn to read, take a butchers' at this...

Pairing: Uncertain yet, but there will be some romance, mild at least—dunno how far it'll go, who'll get involved, how it'll turn out. But I guarantee I won't kill someone off just 'cause a 'ship won't work and I can't find a reasonable way to end it. You have my word on that. If someone does die, it'll be for other reasons.

Author's Note: This is a first-time 'What-if?' Fanfic. Thus far this is my first Andromeda fanfic, although I have had some fanfic published in the now no-longer operational "Delta Source" Fanzine. More fic is planned, of multiple types and milieus, including crossovers, one of which I'm already writing—to make those easier to find, when I post them they'll be in both relevant areas (I won't be trying for more than two milieus colliding at once!)—if FFN has areas for both...oh bloody sue me already, I'm experimenting here. I'm not settling into a mould. I get an idea, I have a go with it, that's the way I do everything in my life. I ain't bleedin' changing.

Argh. Sorry to be so harsh there, it's just that at time of writing this (mid July '04) I've just completed my A-level exams at college, I'm waiting for feedback and my poor fingernails have lasted all of five minutes. If anything, I'm suffering from more stress NOW than before the exams. And FYI, non-British readers, A-levels are the British final-year-of-college examinations that come just before you have to select a degree course at university... assuming you get the results necessary... _ohgodI'mgoingtofailaren'tI. FaceitIdon'tstadachance._

Anyway, feedback is very much appreciated. Just...use your flamethrowers sparingly, okay?

P.S. Yeah, I know, you want the story. Last comment. Just for your peace of mind, the only bugger in this whole shebang with a Brit accent will be ME. The characters will NOT be attempting that under my writing. Besides, no one who hasn't lived in the United Kingdom for a lengthy period of time and spent a lot of time with us natives can pull off a proper fake accent or at least one that could fool the real deal, so I seriously doubt a bunch of aliens and A.I.'s three thousand years down the road would have the slightest clue what we sounded like, especially as there's been no one on the show who's used an even half-believable Brit accent. I mean c'mon, I've known people over here who stopped watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer because James Marsters' accent was about as genuine as Jeffrey Archer and anything he's written, and just as insulting to the point of being downright racist. Mind you, I was curled up laughing at that accent meself. Oh ye gods. Enough!

Now ladies, gentles, all, list to my tale...

OF LARVAE AND LOVE  
  
CHAPTER ONE:  
  
AFTERMATH  
  
"_Keep Buggering On._"

—Winston Churchill, 1940, just before the Battle Of Britain.

================================================================

CY10088  
Specific time: shortly after the escape of Andromeda and her crew from  
the Magog worldship.

Harper slept fitfully, his dreams and nightmares merging. Within them he saw himself being attacked by Magog. He could feel their claws tearing into his flesh, their teeth as they sank into him, smell the sweat in their matted fur and the scent of dead meat and freshly-spilled blood on their breath, they were so close...  
  
He suddenly awoke, bolt upright, screaming in sheer, instinctive terror, screaming louder than he had in a very long time.  
  
"Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! It's okay!" Trance was instantly at his side. She gently took his hand in hers, soothing him tenderly and he slowly sank back against a soft pillow. He eventually realised he was on a bed in the Med Deck, and that Trance and Rev were there. Tyr lay on a bed next to his own, unconscious and a little worse for wear.  
  
Harper sighed in relief. "Oh, man. Talk about nightmares! I dreamt I was being infested by Magog eggs, and they were, uh..." Harper trailed off as he noticed the others were looking serious. "...not a dream?" he asked, his terror slowly, inexorably returning.  
  
"I'm afraid not." Rev admitted.  
  
"But everything turned out okay, right? I mean, we escaped, uh, the bad guys' worldship was destroyed, and you just took the eggs out, right?"  
  
"Well, we've escaped," Trance admitted, looking uncomfortable.  
  
Rev sighed. "The worldship was not destroyed, although we did cripple it somewhat. As for the eggs..." He trailed off, hesitant.  
  
Trance cupped his hand in hers as she sat on the bed beside him. "Magog larvae, they kind of wrap themselves around things and when you try to take them out, they attack the host. I figured out a way to get them out, but I wasn't sure if it was going to work, so I tried it out on Tyr, and...well, he survived—barely."  
  
"But I'm not a Nietzschean." Harper pointed out, trying to hide his panic.  
  
"That's not all the bad news," Trance looked into his eyes, tears faintly welling up in her own. "It—it didn't work. I almost got him killed, Harper. He's—Tyr's still infested. I got most of them, but three of larvae are still in him."  
  
Rev held up a vial of a white substance. "This is a drug. It is a lukaprine variant. If you and Tyr take it religiously and remain in otherwise good health, it will keep the larvae dormant for a time." He passed it to Harper, who looked at it dubiously.  
  
"And while the two of you are taking it, we will try very hard to find another way to get them out," Trance added, blinking back the tears. "Everything will be just fine. We promise."  
  
Harper snorted. "Gee, I feel better already. Just out of curiosity, what happens when you can't figure out a way to get the larvae out? We're supposed to take this forever?"  
  
Rev shook his head slowly. Harper grew worried for him; his feelings for most Magog aside, he knew his friend must have gone through hell on the worldship. The sight of that thing, the 'Spirit of the Abyss'...that had to have been hard on him, and his faith. "No. Eventually, the medication will cease to be effective. If we have not found an alternative treatment by that time, the larvae will become active and you will die."  
  
Harper groaned. "Why don't you just shoot me now?"  
  
"Harper!" Trance exclaimed, releasing his hand.  
  
"No, I mean it, Trance. I don't want to walk around life waiting for my stomach to burst open. You shoulda just left me to die. You shoulda..."  
  
A thunderous roar burst forth from Tyr's bed, as piercing brown eyes slammed open and drilled Harper to the very depths of his soul, interrupting the diminutive engineer.  
  
The brawny Nietzschean paused, drew breath, and mimicked Harper in his whiny, pathetic tone of voice. "Kill me. I'm doomed. You shoulda just let me die." He abandoned the tone, and bellowed, "Listen to yourself! Child, if I can teach you one thing..."  
  
Harper cut in. "If you're gonna give me anymore of that 'Where there's life, there's hope' crap...thanks." He smiled lopsidedly at his fellow inmate of hell. "'Cause I really need to hear it right about now man."  
  
Tyr seemed pleased at this, and flashed his teeth at him playfully. Harper grinned, and shrank back in mock-horror, causing the pair to burst out laughing.  
  
_Yep_, Harper thought to himself as the noise subsided, _we fought together, got captured together, escaped together, we might yet die a horrible death from these li'l thievin' parasites together, but ... hell, at least we'll do it together we're not alone. I mean c'mon! I've gotta be okay if Tyr's in for the ride with me._

=================================================================

Specific time: Three weeks later.

=================================================================

Tyr winced slightly as pain burst forth like water from a breached dam in his stomach, and he inhaled deeply of the medicine phial that hung around his neck. He breathed a sigh of relief as the pain—and the larvae's movements—subsided.  
  
He continued onwards through the conduit, knowing that Harper had to be close. Having heard about his recent behaviour from the Ship, he felt it was only his duty to at least have a word or two with the boy. The Purple One had only released him from Medical less than a week ago, and before that time had come, Harper had visited him constantly despite his own pain.  
  
Much as the Earther usually annoyed him, Tyr had found himself come to welcome the visits. For a time, this young man, this mudfoot that he'd barely glanced at only for threat assessment when they'd first met, had successfully made him forget the prospects of his potentially imminent death to the spawn of those who had...  
  
He shuddered. Together, he and Harper had been brutally violated. And hardened though he, Tyr Anasazi, the sole survivor of the Kodiak Pride had become over the course of his long life, that was one of a very miniscule list of things that truly and deeply disturbed him.  
  
A year ago, he would have ignored or killed Harper without a second's thought either way. Now...now things were different.  
  
The youth had saved his life that fateful day. And before, on the numerous occasions when without him, Andromeda would not have been repaired in time and all aboard killed, himself included. He _owed_ Harper.  
  
He'd had an easy way out. The human could have said the word, and he would have obliged by planting a gauss round through his skull. And yet he hadn't taken that option in the end. He'd stood and fought at Tyr's side instead, and paid a truly horrific price.  
  
No doubt ordinarily Captain Hunt or Beka would have talked to the boy, and succeeded where his life-sized love-doll had failed. But they had gone with the Reverend Behemial and taken the _Eureka Maru_ off to some drift or other to procure supplies and spare parts, and thus were hardly in a position from which to object to his course of action.  
  
He rounded a corner, finally locating Harper. The boy looked up, a brief, instinctive fight-or-flight look in his eyes from one glance at his bone blades, a look swiftly usurped by one of relief. The Nietzschean grunted from a faint stab of pain from his cramped muscles as he squatted beside the engineer.  
  
There they sat for some time. Silence prevailed between them. Harper seemed to begin to snuggle a little closer to the Nietzschean, then caught himself and stayed right where he was.  
  
"I heard about what happened in Medical," Tyr finally began. "Is it something you particularly wish to discuss?"  
  
"Not really," Harper sighed, expecting a tirade, and so was surprised at the response he did receive.  
  
"As you wish." Tyr smiled tiredly. "I quite understand your reasoning."  
  
Harper grinned in return. "Thanks."  
  
"Like it or not, we're both in the same situation Little Professor. I may not know every detail of your life, but your decision is one that I quite frankly agree with in many ways."  
  
"Really?"  
  
Tyr laughed bitterly. "Never mind getting attacked...they did more to us than just that." He sighed. "The question you need to truly ask yourself is how much you will surrender to the filth who did this to you. To us."  
  
"WHAAAT?" Harper was caught off-guard. "I haven't 'surrendered' anything!"  
  
"No?" The Nietzschean crooked an eyebrow. "You have denied places to yourself because of them. You have let them deny you access to the locations in this universe which nature and evolution may as well have intended to be your primary habitat. Andromeda's machine shops and engineering are places in which you practically live almost as much as you do your own quarters. They are your places, your territory, if they are anybody's. And yet you have given them up. I understand your fear. Believe me, I..." he faltered, then ploughed on. It was too late to turn back now "Harper...ordinarily I wouldn't say something like this...but then again, there's a ship the size of a sun, filled with five trillion septic, hungry Magog, coming our way—MY way. Something like that will make a man rethink his priorities.  
  
"Harper," he said, his voice gentle, as he looked the young man in the eye, "the truth of the matter is, I understand your fear because I feel it as well This situation scares me, Harper. You and I—we can't give in to that fear. It is a perfectly rational reaction, but it is one we must not allow ourselves to succumb to."  
  
Harper looked as though his world had been knocked sideways. "You—_afraid?_"  
  
The corner of his lips twitched upwards briefly at the boy's incredulity. "I am. There's no point in denying that, certainly not to myself, and nor I believe to you. You know this fear just as well as I do, if not better. So I have no reservations about telling you this Professor. You understand me equally as well as I understand you on this matter."  
  
Harper nodded, smiled weakly in sympathy. "Thanks Tyr."  
  
"You're welcome," he assured the youth. "And...if you'd like, Harper...I'll go with you to engineering. If you'd feel better if I were with you, that is. And we can probably pressgang your finest artwork into accompanying us as well."  
  
Harper smiled, and Tyr could see a small tear brought to his eye. "Yeah," he whispered. "Yeah, I think I'll take you up on that man. Let's go get Rommie and get down there. I s'pose I really oughta take a look at those transfer lines."  
  
"Then lead on, lead on MacDuff!" Tyr laughed lightly, as they started out for the nearest corridor. Harper chuckled, an honest, hearty, straight-from- the-stomach chuckle that brought a feeling of satisfied accomplishment to his friend's mind.

================================================================

Specific time: two hours after the return of the _Eureka Maru_.

================================================================

"_What?_" Dylan looked incredulously at Rommie. He had just finished interrogating Tyr as to the reasons why the Maru had just been attacked by Nietzscheans. Nietzscheans who had originally flown straight past them and doubled back twice as though they'd recognised the vessel. Fortunately, Beka had flung them into slipstream just as their pursuers had opened fire and they'd escaped, but the High Guard officer was still angry with his acting-fire-control officer  
  
"Dylan, I'm afraid it's true. The larvae are already growing more active, more resilient to the drug."  
  
He sighed, running his hands over his face in frustration as he collapsed into his chair. "Who else knows about this?"  
  
"So far Trance, you and me."  
  
"Good. I'll...I'll tell Beka myself later today," he groaned. "How long do they have?"  
  
She shrugged slightly. "I'd say Harper has a month, perhaps a little more at best. Tyr might survive a week longer than that. However, in all honesty they could both be dead by the end of tomorrow. I'm sorry Dylan, but it's impossible to be certain."

================================================================

Specific time: An hour after Rommie's report to Dylan

================================================================

Rommie eventually found Beka in one of the storage bays, a wild gleam in her eye and a manic expression on her face as she consulted a flexi. She looked up at Rommie's approach, grinning broadly.  
  
"Just the person I needed to see!" she beamed. "Listen, I need your advice on this idea I've got..." She broke off at Rommie's serious demeanour.  
  
"Dylan needs to have a word with you," Rommie quietly told her. "He said to let you know it's...it's important. And it's not good."  
  
Beka swallowed, blinking furiously as tears welled up in her eyes. "It's about the larvae, isn't it." Rommie nodded sadly. "Well," Beka smiled weakly, rubbing her eyes, "all the more reason I need to see you."  
  
"What is it?"  
  
She tapped a few commands into the flexi and handed it to Rommie. "Look familiar?"  
  
Rommie's lips twitched upwards into a smile as she stared at the schematics.  
  
Beka grinned broadly, clapping her on the shoulders and forcing Rommie to meet her gaze. "So what do ya think?"  
  
Rommie shrugged. "It's an insane plan, fraught with risk...and it might just work."

===============================================================

Author's Note: Cue the OTT dramatic music...? Not a chance. Seriously though, whatever you think of this, I'm interested in hearing it. Well, right up until someone blasts me with a flamethrower, at which point I'll be busy rolling on the ground swatting the flames out. I'm working on the next chapter, and I've written a couple of sequences to be used later on, and it is thus that I can guarantee that on Friday 30th July (English time) at the latest I'll have some more stuff posted, one way or another.

If anyone's got any comments, problems, ideas, questions, preferences etc., send 'em along and I'll take a dekko, make a few adjustments here and there if I see something that I like or fancy experimenting with and don't cause my poor little PC to short circuit in shock. Mind you, please keep things serious—ideas involving Bugs Bunny or cheesy Star Trek monsters or sending William Shatner forwards in time to visit when he picks up Tom Baker's scarf at a Doctor Who convention or whatever are out. If, on the other hand, you think you can see the beginnings of a good relationship between some characters in my gibberish—ahem, 'scuse me, writing—then by all means get in touch and point it out even if it's bloody obvious—I'd rather have to read half-a-dozen reviews, postings etc. all telling me the same thing rather than miss a turning that could turn out to be quite nifty. Send your opinions and observations along and I'll see what I can do.

I may not have a physical office on Fan Fiction Dot Net, and I certainly don't have a door here either, but just imagine it as being open, hmm? And unlike Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully of the Discworld (someone and something else which I also do not own), it is not so that when I'm bored I can fire my crossbow over my desk, across the corridor and into the target above my accountant's desk. It is open because I need, nay, crave information, and indeed welcome the stuff as the very essence of life. Besides, I'm a student. I have no possible requirement for an accountant. Oh well, looking forward to hearing from you,  
  
Union-Jack 2.0


	2. Chapter Two: A Death Is Lived

Salutations from the sunny southern coast o' England! Here's Chapter Two, on schedule as promised.  
  
Additional disclaimer: I own none of the "Lord of the Rings" characters. Don't worry, I'm not off me rocker and this isn't becoming a X-over—it's just a vague and casual reference and I don't take chances when it comes to big companies.  
  
Just to re-iterate, I am making NO, that's ENN—OH money from this! Oh, I really have to stop shouting...killer migraine alert...  
  
Spoilers: All Too Human in particular  
  
A/N: The science involved here may be a 'bit dodgy'—I'm no scientist, I'm no computer expert, and this is just a weird idea I had a while back. I'm not up to speed on techno terms, 'kay?  
  
The contents of this chapter include the original idea that kicked me off on this entire crazy caper—what if when Harper overdosed on the lukaprine he actually saved his own life by doing so, staying alive just long enough for...well, the next step in the development of this plot, shall we say. This is where things really get going, so enjoy...

CHAPTER TWO:  
  
A DEATH IS LIVED

=============================================================  
  
"_A gasp of breath,_

_a sudden death:_

_the tale begun._"

—The Book of Counted Sorrows  
  
=============================================================  
  
Specific time: After the _Eureka Maru_'s return from the mission to Machen Alpha  
  
=============================================================

_"He's got Magog larvae in his gut. He's dying—suffering."  
_  
Less than twelve hours ago, Tyr Anasazi had uttered those words. He had washed his hands of the diminutive engineer—or so he had thought.  
  
Less than two hours ago, Rommie had used a stolen Magog swarmship to tow the _Eureka Maru_ into Andromeda's hangar. He had been recovering well from his enforced hypothermia, and although Harper had remained unconscious, he had believed—as the android and the Reverend Behemial Far Traveller had believed—that the young man would recover.  
  
Now, the Nietzschean sighed as he inhaled from the lukaprine phial that hung around his neck. Harper had been rushed to Medical where Trance had awaited.  
  
He had been waiting outside for quite some time now, and still there was no news. The Purple One and Rommie had sealed the doors after shooing him and the others out. After they had explained the full scale of the situation to them all.  
  
He had honestly and dearly hoped that a way could be found to cure Harper. For if such a method worked on the youth, despite all his disadvantages, then surely there was hope for himself?  
  
Every time his thoughts strayed towards the larvae, his mind would eventually tread that same path. Each time, he would present that piece of sound, Nietzschean reasoning to himself in justification.  
  
Each time, he couldn't help but know that there was something else. Some other reason that every instinct he possessed screamed and ranted at him that such a thing could not possibly be true.  
  
In many ways, he admired the young man. He fought desperately and often surprisingly successfully in life. He had been born into a hellhole where death and all other atrocities ever committed against sentient beings were very far from out of the ordinary. His physiology was flawed beyond belief—had such a child been born to Nietzschean parents, he would have been immediately euthanased and their bloodline forever marked as tainted and eventually die out. His immune system was a joke, and he was so very weak, save for when those whom he cared for were truly imperilled and the individual responsible was before him..  
  
He had suffered many things on Earth. Committed acts that even he, Tyr, far from his closest of friends, could tell that Harper sincerely regretted.  
  
And still he fought, still he refused to surrender.  
  
He almost had, upon learning that he really was infested with Magog larvae. It had been hard for them both. Still Tyr found himself privately wondering whether it would be best to destroy himself and ensure the larvae within him would never live. Still he found it difficult to go on.  
  
And yet they had both fought onwards. Both had experienced hell and found themselves on a quest to rebuild an entire dream-like civilisation.  
  
Had Seamus Zelazny Harper been born a healthy Nietzschean, he would surely have been an Alpha of his own little Pride by now, of this much Tyr was sure. Or perhaps _not_ such a little Pride...  
  
And now, if things went well, there was indeed a way for Harper to be saved, albeit a highly unorthodox way that didn't entirely match his personal idea of being 'saved'. And it would never, could never, work for him.  
  
Harper, himself and the others had worked obsessively to find a cure to the sixteen larvae that plagued them both. But if this procedure worked—and that was not a possibility he discounted out of hand as idly as he would have done a year ago—would they continue to do so? Did the others regard him, Tyr, as a close enough friend and sufficiently valued ally to want to save his life and his alone?  
  
He could not truly say.  
  
He waited. He watched.  
  
And he _hoped_. Hoped for the survival of the one he called his friend.  
  
=============================================================  
  
She had dove into a star. Been suspended in time on the edge of a black hole's event horizon. Lived through a nova bomb detonation. Fallen in love, and had her heart broken.  
  
Andromeda had all these memories and experiences, as a ship and a soldier and a person. And yet, in so many ways none of them worried her so thoroughly as _this_.  
  
She soared through the datastreams, approaching the barrier. She hated to do this, but any other course of action would lead to failure. And of all the things she had ever done, she could _not_ afford to fail in this task.  
  
The dataport's firewalls parted at her forceful touch, intact but barring her way no longer—  
  
In a flash, she was _in_.  
  
He looked surprised to see her, to see the background change from the Maru's interior to one of dataflows and holograms.  
  
"R- Rommie? H-how...are you _real_? You're really there?"  
  
"Don't worry Harper, I'm not a dream," she assured him. "I'm accessing your mind much the same way you enter mine, through your dataport's matrix."  
  
He nodded, folding his arms. "Something's wrong, isn't it. The last thing I can remember was that the larvae were acting up again, and I'd just used the lukaprine to calm 'em down...it's bad, right?"  
  
She nodded sadly. "It is. To be honest with you, well..." She trailed off, unable to bring herself to admit the severity of the situation.  
  
He grinned resignedly. "It's gonna be the big one, right? The larvae're comin' outta my gut and there's absolutely squat you guys can do about it."  
  
"Harper," she fought to speak, voice choked. "Harper, listen to me. Hey!" she forced him to look at her. "Harper, I'm sorry about this, but I didn't come here just to give bad news." She smiled, placed a hand on his shoulder reassuringly. "There's good news as well."  
  
"You mean Rev's been talking to his Divine to give me a break after I'm dead?" he groaned. "Geez, thanks."  
  
"Will you just listen to me for a minute?!" she cried in exasperation. "Harper, what would happen if you were in my virtual reality matrix and someone removed the jack from your 'port?"  
  
"My mind would be left stranded in VR, and that's if I was lucky," he automatically replied. "So what?"  
  
"Beka came up with a plan for if we couldn't get the eggs out of you. A plan to let you survive."  
  
He stared at her, an expression of complete and total confusion dominating his features. "Rom-Doll...are you _feeling_ okay? 'Cos that just makes no sense at all."  
  
She sighed. "Harper, you're familiar with equipment locker six and the supplies in there, right? You've raided it for parts to repair me often enough."  
  
"Yuh-huh," he slowly nodded, still confused.  
  
"And you know the storage capacity of my reserve data modules in there."  
  
"Yeah, just one of 'em could hold your entire mainframe and have room to spare. Why?"  
  
She groaned inwardly; why did he have to make things so awkward? But still, she owed him for the many times he had willingly worked himself to exhaustion, so greatly he cared for her, so he deserved some slack. "Harper, one of those modules is with you, Trance and my avatar in Medical right now. I'm here to guide you out of your body and into the module."  
  
"W-w-wait a minute. _Out_ of my body?! Leave my body? You're serious?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
Harper moaned weakly as he ran his fingers through his hair. "Will it work?"  
  
"Well, to be honest with you it's far from guaranteed. But you have a chance to survive like this, and with me helping you from in here, that chance is greatly improved. And Trance and my avatar are outside monitoring every step of the way. It can work, you have very real opportunity to live, Harper."  
  
"And what happens then, huh? Say it works, hell, say it's an all-out, full- blown and qualified success. What do I do then? I mean, am I just gonna be stuck as a 'brain-in-a-box'?"  
  
"You'll be able to access my virtual reality matrix, and we can connect you to some of my systems so you'll be able to generate a hologram of yourself." _Dammit, we're losing time here!_ "Harper," she said softly, "this is your only chance and we don't have very much time. If you want to try it, let me know now, because we need to begin immediately if you do."  
  
Harper threw up his hands helplessly. "Dead if we don't, possibly dead if we do. Why're you even asking, of course I want to do this. Sure, I might get depressed or whatever later on, but at least I'll be alive to do so, right? Sure, get me outta here Lady Galadriel."  
  
She nodded as she closed her eyes, communicating with Trance and preparing herself.  
  
She was under no illusions that this would in any way be easy. Although Harper's mind and all the knowledge he possessed were somewhat larger than the mind of an average human—thanks to all the data he'd crammed into it since getting his dataport years ago—it was still miniscule in comparison to her own, still easy for her to contain and manoeuvre between his body and the data module. What would make things difficult would be its fragility and the processing rate of the dataport. If she attempted to extract him just a little bit too fast, Harper's mind would be torn to pieces.  
  
And if she went too slowly...  
  
She refused to let herself consider that possibility.  
  
If truth be told, she had more than her fair share of worries and concerns that made her greatly doubt her ability to succeed in this, much as the idea pained her. So many things could go wrong, in so many ways Harper could die...  
  
"Rommie?" Harper's worried call seemed so very far away.  
  
"What is it?" she gently asked, as she finished her preparations and returned her focus to the dataport's matrix.  
  
Although in the information universe things such as tears were impossible, Harper certainly looked fearful indeed. "You won't let me die, right? I mean, sure it's gonna be difficult, but you won't fail, right? I know I've been annoying—hell, I've been a complete asshole half the time—but you'll keep me alive won't you?"  
  
She smiled as her fears and doubts evaporated at his pleading tone. In the core of her very essence, she now knew she would succeed if for no other reason than that she had to succeed, for him if not for herself. Too many people who had trod her decks as her crew had died. Harper would not. It was a blindingly simple and pure equation.  
  
She refused to allow this young man to die. She vowed to herself upon her honour as an Officer and Ship of Her Majesty's Fleet that he would live and that she would fight to the limits of her power to ensure that he could survive.  
  
She stepped forwards, bringing her image close to his, and rested a hand gently on the side of his face. "You will live, Harper. I promise you, you will live to see this day's end and tomorrow begin."  
  
He visibly calmed and raised his arm, lightly resting his fingertips upon her hand. "What do I need to do?"  
  
"'Just hold still, darlin'...'" she drawled in a passable imitation of his Bostonian accent. "Relax as much as you can...still your thoughts. Empty your mind." His head drooped a little, as she monitored his brain activity. "Empty your mind...calm."  
  
This was _it_.  
  
The dataflows vanished, as did the images that represented herself and Harper.  
  
She reached out...  
  
=============================================================  
  
It was, to the outside universe, the work of no more than a second.  
  
To Andromeda, a second was an eternity. An ordinary, _uneventful_ second.  
  
This particular second seemed to stretch much further beyond even that.  
  
In a long, drawn-out process, she eased Harper out through his dataport. All her considerable focus was intent on the operation. As she grew more and more obsessed with her work, life support ceased to function on her lower, unused decks. The lights in Command went out. Her androids halted squarely in their tracks as her consciousness withdrew from them.  
  
As her engineer's mind pulled free of his body, as Trance and her avatar stepped back as the larvae fought to grow and free themselves of their host as they sensed their doom, Andromeda fought down a flicker of emotion, of relief.  
  
She wasn't finished yet.  
  
Slowly, gently, she guided the precious, delicate little spark of light that was Harper's mind toward the data module.  
  
He was so very fragile like this. So vulnerable. The slightest error...  
  
_The slightest error will not happen,_ she mentally chided herself, then focussed once more on the task at hand.  
  
If her mind had had a physical, organic form of its very own, it would have been sweating at that very moment. By the _bucketload_.  
  
With a slight digital whisper, he was in, he was through. Protocols, algorithms and interfaces flickered into life within the data module, establishing an environment into which his mind could unfold in safety. She followed him in, gently and carefully settling him into his shell of connections with the physical world...  
  
An interface matrix was swiftly established.  
  
And at last it was _over_.  
  
=============================================================  
  
Tyr's gauss pistol was in his hand within a second when he heard the howls and squeals of larvae. The tearing of flesh and Trance's cry for Rommie echoed clearly through the corridor as he pounded at the med deck doors, demanding that Andromeda open them. His assault on the doors only intensified as he heard a force lance being fired, a volley of screaming effectors snarling within Medical.  
  
At last he slumped, desperately inhaling the lukaprine to subdue his larvae, and knew in his heart that Harper was surely dead.  
  
=============================================================  
  
Harper blinked—or at least, the image of him inside the matrix blinked.  
  
It had changed, he realised. Most less-technically-minded people would have been hard-pressed to notice the difference, but to one such as himself who spent a great deal of time in such environments, he knew it was a completely different matrix.  
  
"Is...is it over?" he cautiously asked as Andromeda flickered in beside him.  
  
"It is...done," she gasped, looking exhausted. "Ugh...I won't be doing that again any time soon."  
  
"Are you alright? Is it something I can help with?"  
  
She shook her head as she recovered herself. She grinned broadly as she felt herself returning to normal, as lights, life support and all other activities she had suspended returned to normal. "It's nothing, but I appreciate the concern," she assured him. "You'll need to get used to this. After that, we'll move onto the use of screens, and then see if we can get a hologram generated. But for now...I don't know about you, but I need a rest."  
  
"Just as long as I don't stop you from generating your own," he quipped. "Rommie..." He found himself unable to express the words in his heart fully, and so used what he could. "...thanks." He threw his virtual arms about her in a hug. She smiled, partly from relief, partly from the happiness that welled up inside her, as she returned the embrace warmly, as he shook with unwept binary tears of relief and thanks.  
  
=============================================================  
  
Smoke rose from the muzzle of Rommie's force lance, as she and Trance stared at the remains of the larvae that had torn their way free of Harper's corpse.  
  
The beautiful android shuddered at the sight of her engineer's still and rapidly cooling form. Even though she knew full well that he was alive and perfectly safe within the data module, it still pained her to see his body.  
  
"Rommie...?" Trance hesitantly asked from behind her.  
  
"He's fine," she assured her. "He's alive...and safe."  
  
=============================================================  
=============================================================  
=============================================================  
  
Author's Note: What do ye reckon? Any ideas, opinions etc? Any preferences regarding Tyr's situation, and who wants what to happen to the Harpster now the li'l so'n'so's gone digital? C'mon, talk to me already.  
  
By the by, thought you might like a taste of the first chapter of something else I'm working on; "Late Knight's Fall," coming soon to a certain Fan Fiction Dot Net near you. This is another AU fic, '**R**' rated. Disclaimer: I own the _Quicksilver Arrow_, her captain, Carl Forbes, and the mercenary Cassius Anasazi. Tribune owns anything that I don't invent (anything from the little screen, in other words). See below for the teaser:  
  
=============================================================  
=============================================================  
=============================================================  
  
"Give up, you can't win," he told Beka.  
  
"I told you before," the blonde woman said, spying Harper's force lance. Telemachus noted the movement, saw his own force lance, and they both leapt away at the same time.  
  
_Time slowed again.  
_  
Beka lunged over the console, tugging the weapon from her now-unconscious chief-engineer's holster, whilst Telemachus spun over the fire control station to where his weapon had dropped.  
  
"Time dilation is increasing," Andromeda reported, her voice slurred by the distortion.  
  
"Pessimism is not a survival trait!" Beka shouted as they both raised their respective force lances.  
  
Telemachus fired and she recoiled, the ruby-red effector just barely missing her.  
  
They leapt into the air again, firing at each other. Telemachus' shot almost clipped his Captain, but Beka's aim was to prove the surer, and punctured the Nietzschean. Both fell heavily to the deck.  
  
Beka crossed to her dying friend. "Telemachus, what have you done?" she asked, wracked with grief at her own actions.  
  
The other gasped in pain, fighting to speak as he gently grasped her hand. "I'm proud of you. You should be..."  
  
_Time stopped.  
_  
The Andromeda Ascendant had reached the event horizon of the black hole.  
  
=============================================================  
  
The _Quicksilver Arrow_ shuddered as the Kalderan fighters came about for another pass. Seated in the pilot's chair at the very fore of the cluttered cockpit, Reverend Behemial Far Traveller prayed fervently to the Divine under his breath, his claws clinging to the controls as he desperately manoeuvred the salvage vessel to avoid the worst of their firestorm. A steady stream of choice and intense swearing punctuated the opening of the attack run as Carl Forbes blazed away at them with the ship's AP gun batteries to little avail.  
  
"Come on, come on me old son. I got you ya li'l bastard, I got you...in...my..._sights_. _Lights out,_ sunshine!" he snarled victoriously as a fighter erupted into an expanding ball of flames under his barrage. "Reverend, come about to zero-two-niner, negative thirty degrees and cut to half cruising speed."  
  
"Coming about," the Magog priest agreed, carefully and swiftly executing the manoeuvre.  
  
"Trance, how're we doing back there?" the young man hollered. Since the intercom system had finally given up the ghost last year, they were reduced to either using radio headsets or simply shouting at the tops of their lungs.  
  
In the depths of the _Arrow_'s engine room, Trance Gemini relaxed her grip on a pipe with her tail and tumbled to the deck below, landing neatly in a roll onto her feet. She groaned as she stowed her nanowelder into her toolbelt as she crossed to one of the consoles. "Go easy on the sub-light engines!" she yelled. "Keep under two-thirds, the AP tanks are starting to become unstable! I'm gonna try and lock them down as best I can, but it's not going to be easy and I'll need to cut all engines in a few minutes else they'll either shut down or blow up on us!"  
  
"You get that Rev?" Carl asked.  
  
"I certainly did," came a gravelly reply.  
  
"Cut to one third and come about to five-eight-one at forty degrees positive. Lining up a shot..."  
  
Rev sweated, staining his fur and robe as he set their new course. The remaining pair of fighters seemed to be learning from their pack mates' demise, and were spreading out their formation so as to avoid the enfilation techniques that the _Arrow_ was reputed and famed in spacer circles for executing so perfectly.  
  
"Come on...right this way lads...that's it..."  
  
"New contact!" Rev shouted. "Closing fast from behind the Kalderans... they're firing! Missile contacts from the Kalderan fighters!"  
  
"Firing!" the blonde man barked, loosing shots from the AP guns.  
  
"The new contact...sensors say it's a _Gargoyle_-class Nietzschean fighter!"  
  
=============================================================  
=============================================================  
=============================================================  
  
Hope you enjoy the finished product...  
  
As I mentioned earlier, "Late Knight's Fall" is an AU fanfic and I've got another one of these (albeit not quite so drastically different an AU) along with a second X-over in the pipe as well, "Andromeda: A New Dawn" and "Warriors Displaced" respectively. I also seem to have an idea on strength that involves bringing in a force from some Brit sci-fi I enjoy (nothing from the telly, you'd need to get down a decent bookshop to find this stuff) that will make the vaunted 'Spirit of the Abyss' seem about as threatening as the cuddly toy otter that I still have from my childhood. More on that later...  
  
This is Union-Jack2.0, signing off.


	3. Chapter Three: Changes

Disclaimer: I own this quote. I strongly recommend you don't try nicking it, because I get..._offended_...by that sort of behaviour. Violent by nature I may not be, but hell, I grew up in Staines. All I need is a minute to have the same effect on a guilty party that bromide in tea is reputed to take several weeks to achieve.

I also own the Gravian star system.

Author's Notes: If you decide you like this fic or hate it or have suggestions/ideas etc., please please PLEASE click that little purple button at the bottom and say anything you like (well, other than blast away with flamethrowers if you know what I mean!) It's not that I'll stop writing this without reviews, it's just I'm getting a tad worried 'cos my A-level results are coming up and I'm stressed out to the max here. Once again my fingernails have been reduced to splintered kindling.

* * *

CHAPTER THREE

CHANGES

"_What are we to the world? Our lives are but specks of dust to the time of the world, to the universe. It is hard to see how each of us can make a difference with our short lives._

"_But it happens. By taking an action, or saying something at the right time to the right person, or not being somewhere, the world can change. It is often imperceptible, yet such a change can happen."_

—Anonymous, circa Earth Year 2004

* * *

Specific Time: Three days after the completion of the Machen Alpha mission

* * *

"_Dammit!_" Beka snapped, sucking at her hand.

"Need a hand, boss?"

She jumped as Harper materialised as a hologram beside her. "Geez, you scared a year's growth outta me shorty."

He grinned lopsidedly, spreading his 'hands' wide in apology. "Sorry. Can't knock on a bulkhead or anything. What's the trouble?"

"Mmm—damned nanowelder, slipped and cut myself with it," she nodded toward the offending implement in question, still trying to clean the cut as best she could.

"_Ouch._ You want I should get Trance?"

She grinned, twitching an eyebrow. "_Now_ you've got no problems with getting Trance to look at a little scrape."

He flinched at this, and she regretted her choice of words. "Look, I-I didn't mean it like that Harper..."

"...yeah. I know Bek," he whispered. "It's...y'know what, it's nothing, it's okay. I mean, hell, I'm never, _never_ getting sick again, yeah? That's _gotta_ be a plus."

She smiled at him, fighting the urge to put a hand on his shoulder and gently squeeze it to reassure him. "Thanks Harper. You go get Trance, I really think that'd be a good idea."

He forced a grin as he dematerialised. "Be back soon."

* * *

Although being dead had many downsides, this was something Harper knew —indeed, _hoped_—he would never grow too accustomed to or blasé about. He felt a surge of exhilaration as he soared through Andromeda's datastreams, heading for the point where he could materialise in Medical.

Something caught the edge of his attention, and he focussed upon it.

_Most_ odd.

He tested it, and grew curious when it did not yield.

This was _weird._

"Hey, Rommie?" he asked, forming an image of himself inside her matrix, all the easier to hold a conversation with. "Why can't I see inside machine shop seventeen? It's not on the list."

One of the conditions that Andromeda and Dylan had laid down when giving Harper the ability to manifest himself as a hologram or on screens was to limit where he could and could not do so. It was a short list to be sure, consisting purely of private quarters and even then he could 'enter' if requested to do so or invited. He had grinned a holographic grin upon being told this, as he remembered the old legends and fiction from Earth concerning the mythical creatures known as 'vampyrs', unable to enter a home without the invitation of the owner.

"Whatever do you mean?" she asked, appearing 'beside' him.

"Oh c'mon Rommie, don't play coy. I was just passing and what do I see but a block keeping me out of machine shop seventeen. What's with that, huh?"

"Ah, well, you see Beka's in there and has engaged privacy mode," she stammered.

Harper grinned, choking down a laugh. "Oh, puh-lease! You're forgetting, babe, you're talking to someone who really knows their way around the insides of a computer matrix and not an amateur. 'Sides, I already checked and that sure's hell ain't privacy mode. And last of all, I just came from Beka—she's in a conduit close to the slipstream core!

"Rommie," he sighed, growing serious, "please don't lie to me, okay? You might be able to depopulate a planet like Machen Alpha or somewhere like that in less than two minutes but lying just isn't your strong suit. What's this about?"

"I think you'll have to ask Dylan," she finally ventured. "I'm sorry Harper, but it...it's something of a secret for now."

He nodded, knowing full well that even if Andromeda was unskilled in deceiving him, she would never willingly surrender a secret. "I'll get around to it," he promised. "By the way, Trance _is_ in Medical, right? Beka cut herself, and I left her about a quarter of a second ago to find Trance, thought I'd get her to take a look at it before it gets infected."

"She is," Andromeda smiled.

"See ya around," he winked, disappearing back into the glittering datastreams.

* * *

This was, Harper mused, a most convenient state of existence for contacting people swiftly and simultaneously. For even as he appeared on a screen in Medical and told Trance about Beka's accident, he was also materialising as a hologram on Command a dozen decks up, all within a full second of leaving Beka. Technology was _bliss_, especially when you resided within it.

He was also faintly amused when Dylan looked up, startled to see a hologram other than Andromeda's materialising right next to him. And that was something else Harper welcomed. Way back after when Beka had only just got him off of Earth, it had taken him literally years to get used to being in close proximity with other people. On Earth, when that happened usually someone was either attacking you or...

He shuddered inwardly, pushing the memory away. Now he had no need to fear things like that. Even though he knew that Beka and Dylan would never allow something like that to happen to him, he felt very secure in the knowledge that as a hologram, he would truly never again have to worry about being physically assaulted or abused.

"Mr. Harper," Dylan began, recovering from his little start, "what can I do for you?"

"Well, I just spotted something odd and Rommie said to ask you about it: what's with machine shop seventeen?"

Dylan sighed, as though he had been anticipating this question for some time and had hoped it would never be asked. "That's, ah—"

"Before you say 'it's a secret' or something like that, I already got that from Andromeda," Harper avoided that particular answer being repeated. "Come on boss bug, ever since we replaced it that shop's been the most advanced of them all. I should know, I helped refit the place!" he began 'pacing' in front of Dylan's console.

"What's going on in there? I know that the Nova bombs are being constructed in shop five, so it's not that, and it's not a standard privacy mode that's been engaged—I checked that barrier real careful-like, and Andromeda isn't blocked, just me."

"Mr. Harper, I promise you you _will_ be told about that when the time is right, but it's not something I'm prepared to go into just right now," Dylan gently smiled, disliking keeping secrets from his engineer but knowing it to be for the best. "I'm sorry, but things...aren't quite ready. Is there anything else?"

"Well, I was going to save this for later, but Beka's filed a list of parts the _Maru_ needs getting on the next supply run, and Tyr and Rommie are compiling a database of parts and equipment for Andromeda—last time I saw them this morning they were arguing over Tyr's request for a dozen gauss rifles..."

Even as he began giving Dylan a semi-complete, informal update on Andromeda's engineering status, Harper's mind was also just as intently focused on the conversation he was holding with Trance in Medical.

"...so anyway, that's all I've managed to get out of Andromeda and Dylan—whadda ya think?"

Trance shrugged, a curious expression gracing her fair features. "All I can say is that it's not something anyone's told me about, that this is the first I've heard of it."

"Yeah but what do you think it might be about?" Had he still retained his organic body, Harper would have by now been bouncing up and down in impatience and anticipation. As things were, such activity was nigh impossible on a screen.

She cocked her head to one side, giving him an odd look. "Dylan said he'd tell you later, right? So, being a machine shop I'd guess that they're building something... something that maybe they're not sure if it will work. Something they don't want to get your hopes up over and then...well, dash them to pieces? Harper, you'll find out anyway—why rush things?"

"'Cause..." Harper paused, uncertain. What was really bothering him?

_Ah._ That was it. Of course it was.

"Hell, 'cause I'm excited about it already!" he grinned lopsidedly at her.

"I thought so," she winked.

"C'mon Trance," he begged. "Please help me out here? Help out this poor little, unbelievably good-looking dead genius engineer?"

She smiled mischievously, a twinkle in her eye. "Andromeda, engage privacy mode please? Leave Harper's link open."

"Privacy mode engaged. Authorisation: acting-armsmaster Trance Gemini."

"Now," she said, springing up on to an empty bed, resting in a crouch, easily poised on the tips of her toes, "what are you thinking of?"

He materialised his hologram before her and left the screen, his report to Dylan done. "Thought you'd never ask," he said. "I was thinking, if you can get to my old shop and find my toolbelt, there's some stuff in there you'll need, we could—"

"Battle stations!" Andromeda called. "Code Red. Repeat, we have Code Red. All crew, man your battle stations."

"Ah, crap," Harper groaned.

* * *

Space split and ruptured as a tear was ripped in it, disgorging a pair of ships before closing once more.

"They're charging weapons!" Andromeda shouted. "I'm reading two Drago-Kazov destroyers—"

She was cut off as they were hit. "We've sustained multiple missile impacts, minor hull breaches on decks nineteen through twenty seven."

"Return fire, all weapons!" Dylan shouted to make himself heard over the explosions.

"We have no offensive missiles or combat drones. AP guns and PDLs will be completely ineffective against their armour and our mid-range missiles are almost completely exhausted," Andromeda's hologram pointed out. "We still haven't rearmed since destroying the Basilisk."

"Remind me to put that on a shopping list and just hit them with whatever you've got. We don't need to destroy them, just make them back off long. Beka, plot a course, get us the hell out of here."

"They're launching assault transports!" Andromeda looked confused. "They have to be insane: why are they risking my defensive weaponry?"

"Why indeed," Dylan muttered.

"Insanity?" Beka offered, fingers dancing across the piloting controls.

"Just let's get out of here," Dylan said.

"Hey guys; Tyr's on his way," Harper announced as he appeared on one of the viewscreens. "Might want to go easy on him; I think his larvae are acting up again." His image winced in involuntary sympathy, and Dylan nodded in acknowledgement. They'd been too late to truly save Harper's life, and troublesome though the Nietzschean sometimes was he hoped they would save him.

The deck shook again, and Andromeda appeared next to Harper. "I'm trying Dylan, but splitting my fire effectively between the destroyers and the transports is growing rapidly more difficult."

"Concentrate on the transports for now, I don't want a single shock trooper setting foot on your decks. How many troop ships are we talking about anyway?"

"There were sixty launched, but only forty-seven remain headed for us. The others are shrapnel or returning to the destroyers with damage...there's too many of them. I'm sorry Dylan, but I won't be able to stop all of them."

"Boss, I could take over operations for some slipfighters, thin 'em out a bit," Harper offered.

"Go for it. Andromeda, transfer flight control for a squadron to Mr. Harper."

* * *

Harper grinned to himself as he swam through the data flow and his consciousness entered the slipfighters. A signal from Andromeda indicated that she was opening the hangar bay doors and he swiftly sent her his thanks as he propelled them out into the star-speckled inky blackness.

Splitting his attention between the dozen fighters was something he now found he could perform with considerable ease, a feat that in the days when he'd been alive would have mentally crippled him to the point of a near lobotomy.

He used up almost half a second—an eternity to him—pondering over Andromeda's magnificence in being capable of such focus, how she simultaneously operated thousands of systems under combat conditions and could yet fly every one of the attack craft that nestled within her hangar bays.

He was, Harper decided as he wove the fighters nimbly through the oh-so-slow defensive fire from the troop ships, only too glad to relieve her of some, if only a little, of her weighty burden. He felt a grim sense of exhilaration as he decorated space with a multitude of explosions, his squadron planting precise and neatly accurate shots in amongst the ranks of the troop ships.

_What are they doing?_ he wondered to himself. Although the Dragans were far from geniuses, he also knew from twenty painful unpleasant years' experience on Earth that they weren't _that_ stupid.

_There!_ He espied another, a stray, craftily dodging Andromeda's defensive fire and far out of range of his fighters. He turned the closest wing-pair toward it, hoping that they could stop it. The pilot, whoever they were, was almost at Beka's level of skill—_almost_, he reaffirmed mentally, and it was not just out of his loyalty for her that her believed that—and Andromeda surely could not stop it, vectoring though she was.

Even as the fighters closed in, he knew he was too late.

The assault transport had latched onto Andromeda's hull.

* * *

A bulkhead disintegrated into rubble as a shaped charge was detonated, and half-a-dozen Drago-Kazov troops spilled out of the transport. Though the vessel had the capacity for thrice that number, such a platoon was not required.

Energy blasts and gauss rounds impacted all about them, pitching three of them to the deck even as they rushed onwards. The survivors ignored them, focusing on their mission at hand. Steps had been taken to ensure their genes would survive.

Reaching a conduit, one of the Nietzscheans clambered in, tearing a panel from the wall and opening a pouch on his belt even as his comrades returned fire in vain against the internal defences. Another soldier fell, a great hole gouged in his torso from concentrated fire. His blood and other internal fluids spilled in a great wave upon the deck plates.

The squad's leader worked fast, attaching cables to certain components. He opened another pouch, and inserted the logic chips he found within. The last soldier collapsed, skull shattered, splinters of blood-soaked bone flying everywhere, the damp gristle of his grey matter slopping like spilled soup as he fell heavily to the deck.

Even as the first dozen effectors chewed into his limbs and torso, the squad leader smiled in victory as lights activated on each of the logic chips.

They had succeeded.

The Andromeda would die.

* * *

"That's the last of the assault ships, and the boarding party has been eliminated," Andromeda said with not a little satisfaction evident in her tone. "Harper's bringing his squadron back in."

"We'll be clear for slipstream in just twenty seconds!" Beka shouted over the constant pounding of weapons fire.

"Good work people," Dylan congratulated them.

"Slipfighters are aboard, hangar five has been secured for slipstream."

"Thanks Rommie. Slipstream in five...four...three...two...one!"

With that, Beka nudged them forward, and the silver chains of the slipstream grabbed Andromeda and pulled them in.

* * *

Among Andromeda's lower decks, a bank of logic chips paused in their flashing of lights. When they began blinking once more, they did so at twice their previous speed.

* * *

"Welcome to Gravia, back-alleyway of the universe," Beka grinned as with a minute twitch of her piloting controls they exited the slipstream. "Widely-renowned for having asteroids, gas giants, bits of rock, debris, and oh yeah! Big rocks to hide behind."

"Are you sure we'll be safe here?" Dylan dubiously asked.

"We hid the _Maru_ from some Kalderan raiders in here once. Usually if you see another ship you never admit to having seen them and they never speak of seeing you. One of this place's good points."

"And besides, there's plenty of cover and asteroids galore for li'l Rommie to gobble up and turn into some nice shiny new missiles and drones," Harper grinned as he materialised in hologram form. "What more could you want?"

"A nice High Guard dry-dock," Andromeda sighed wistfully as she materialised her own hologram beside his. "Somewhere I could gossip with the other warships about the latest targeting packages and manoeuvring thruster breakthroughs and get a few tips on how to get my plasma transducers to operate a little more comfortably. Mine keep...well, you could call it tickl—" She broke off, suddenly alert and looking worried.

"Rommie?" Dylan asked. "What is it?"

Her hologram flickered, as did the lights and screens in Command. "Sabotaaaage!" she slurred almost drunkenly. "Systems—systems disrup..."

With that, she vanished.

"R-Rommie?" Harper whispered.

"Just great," Dylan commented, unpleasant memories of Hephaestus surfacing.

"I'm going after her," Harper said, rubbing his 'hands' together. "It won't be long before we start losing life support and stuff like that."

"Harper!" Beka yelled, vaulting the piloting console. "You—just be careful. Watch your ass for viruses and crap, and make sure none of 'em get in your module."

"I will Boss," he grinned as he dematerialised. "Count on it."

* * *

Instead of the usually pristine coding 'architecture' that was Andromeda's mind, Harper was mortified to find the place was in chaos.

Severed datastreams flapped loosely, whilst others ripped through the matrix faster than should have been feasible for them. Viral cells were everywhere, clawing and blasting, corrupting data structures and leaving binary ruin in their wake.

One of the cells 'noticed' Harper's presence and sped toward him. He grinned tightly, a feral grin indeed as he focused his mind—

The cell exploded into digital oblivion.

Harper took off, rushing through the matrix, destroying viral cells as they charged him. He knew where he was going.

There it was. That was the place.

Andromeda was doing her considerable best, smashing wave after wave of cells like raindrops against a wall. Harper shouted, trying to alert her to his presence and aid without distracting her focus from her battle. She blinked, a sure sign that she had acknowledged him. In a VR matrix, actions such as blinking were completely unnecessary and without purpose except for as signals.

"Good to have some reinforcements," she grunted, as another dozen cells erupted.

"Hang on a sec," he shouted, diving toward another that was approaching from 'behind' her. "Let's see if this works."

He tackled the cell, inserting his 'hands' through its outer layers of defensive and offensive coding. He focused his mind as best he could—

"Rommie! I need some help here!"

"I tried reprogramming them already, they're too strong for me!"

"Join with me! Team effort, together we can take it!"

A smile bloomed upon her lips. "As we said in my Argosy Special Operations days, _Una Salus Victus!_"

Harper shook his 'head' as she joined him, infiltrating the cell's coding. "Tell me later."

Together they probed inwards, together they were beset on all sides by the viral cells and their captive's own inner defensive programming.

A light shone forth, gaping through the tear in the captured cell's membranes...

The light, so blinding and pure, flooded the battered matrix...

On Andromeda's Command Centre, all the screens glowed with the light.

* * *

He looked about himself, seeing nothing but light—

And Andromeda.

She lay there, so still and lifeless.

Most, particularly Nietzscheans, regarded A.I.'s as little more than dead, cold machines. He'd heard Rommie's stories about Machen Alpha, and he was very glad he'd never left the _Maru_ on that mission.

He did not share this view. To Harper, A.I.'s were alive. The _Pax_ and _Balance_ had most certainly fitted the bill, as the poor _Pax_ had been driven mad by love, the _Balance_ through loss of purpose and eventual hatred.

And Andromeda...

"Rommie?" he asked, crossing to her. The light was disappearing now, gradually becoming replaced with the familiar datastreams of Andromeda's mind. "Rommie, wake up. You've got to be okay, we destroyed the virus."

Still she lay there, much as a corpse might.

He shook his head, banishing that thought that so revolted him. The thought that he feared.

He shook her, hugging her to him. She was cold, but in virtual reality that meant nothing. _He_ was cold, if it came to that, and it didn't bother him in the slightest.

"Rommie, please..." he cried out, his call echoing throughout the matrix, "Rommie, you _have_ to be alive. You _have_ to."

Had he been able to, he would have wept.

He tenderly brushed black bangs from her face as he gently, carefully lay her back down. He wished he could cry so very much, if only so that he might express his grief.

Cradling her head, he slowly leaned down and kissed her lips as lightly as a breeze fresh from the sea.

He bowed his head in defeat.

* * *

_Light..._

_Life..._

_LOVE..._

She could feel them all...

She swam towards them, the one who cried out for her...

_She surfaced._

She could feel her matrix was back to normal, and she sighed contentedly.

"Rommie!" Upon Harper's cry, her eyes snapped open. "ROMMIE! You—you're alive! You made it!"

She found herself being swept up in his virtual arms, could feel the warmth of his joy.

_His love._

She smiled back at his overjoyed expression as she floated from his grasp down to the datastreams once again and wrapped him in a hug. "I am. Thanks to you, I might add."

He grinned at this. "Well, if it weren't for you I wouldn'ta lasted five nanoseconds back there."

She grinned, relaxing slightly.

What a conundrum he was, this engineer of hers! A most pleasant puzzle indeed. One who had given all he could whenever he could for her. One who loved her.

She relaxed further, both into the hug and toward this thought. He truly did love her, she realised. Despite his old regular playfully lewd advances, she knew that these were but a mask for the truth of his love.

And now, he existed in much a similar manner as she.

As he laughed in relief and radiated happiness, she knew, too, that she loved him.

"Harper?" she said, pulling back slightly.

"What is it?"

"This," she smiled warmly, as their lips met.

* * *

Author's Note: ARRRRGH! Trying to lose the momentum from my fingers here, they're about ready for orbit...! Ah, that's better. Hell, this is going a _lot_ faster than I thought, but don't worry, I've got plenty of material left. Remember, Tyr's still got eggs and I haven't ref'd 'Into The Labyrinth' or 'Ouroboros' yet. See you soon! And many thanks to the Silver Spider for getting me into this, I've really enjoyed writing this a lot more than I thought I would and I came in with optimistic expectations! Adios from the sunny south of England, Land of Hope and Glory! Buh-bye!

Author's Note 2: Sorry people – I've lost all momentum with my 'Drom fics, so I'm afraid this is the end of the road. Many, many thanks for your interest and support. But I'm afraid real life is in the way of any future fanfic endeavours. hands out Rommie and Harper plushies You've all been great, you really have. Be seeing you, and all the best of luck to you all!


End file.
